The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, S60 5th Edition, and the Future of N-Gage
The new Nokia 5800 XpressMusic smartphone is gradually becoming available throughout the world, and marks the first time Nokia has made a touchscreen-based phone using the popular Symbian S60 operating system. S60 is used by the new N-Gage platform, so in theory any new phone with S60 can also be N-Gage-compatible (though in real life it's not quite that simple). Nokia has also said that it will bring N-Gage to touchscreen phones in 2009, and that's why All About N-Gage is taking an in-depth look at the 5800 and the S60 5th Edition interface.
If you're just interested in the 5800 as a general device, be sure to read our sister site All About Symbian's in-depth multi-part feature on the phone's hardware and software.
The Nokia 5800 is in the middle, with the N95 8GB on the left and the N78 on the right
Disclaimer: We don't know if the 5800 will ever be N-Gage compatible!
It should be made clear that Nokia has never made any official announcements or press releases about the 5800 being N-Gage compatible. It's possible that the phone will never be compatible with N-Gage. Some Nokia representatives at various events did informally talk about N-Gage for the 5800 being "in the pipeline", but informal statements aren't a guarantee of anything.
So, don't buy the 5800 thinking it will be N-Gage compatible, because no one knows if it will be yet. It's even possible that Nokia simply haven't decided yet.
With that in mind, let's get on with the article...
On the left is the S60 5th Edition menu screen, and on the right is the standby screen (with quick links to four contacts)
The 5800 uses the latest version of the S60 web browser, which is based on the open source WebKit browser engine. WebKit is also used by Apple's Safari and Google's Chrome.
The S60 browser can display Flash-based sites such as homestarrunner.com, and can also play Flash video.
Text can be entered with a finger-friendly on-screen keyboard. Alternatively you can use a smaller stylus keyboard, handwriting recognition, or a virtual numeric keypad with predictive text.
Introducing S60 5th Edition
The current range of N-Gage-compatible phones run an operating system called Symbian S60 3rd Edition (the original gen N-Gage and QD ran S60 1st Edition). The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is the first device to use the new version of the OS, S60 5th Edition. In case you're wondering, there's no 4th Edition due to the number four having negative connotations in various parts of Asia.
So far two S60 5th Edition devices have been announced, the 5800 and the upcoming Nokia N97. The N97 has been confirmed as N-Gage-compatible, but (as mentioned above) Nokia haven't said anything officially about N-Gage on the 5800. Other manufacturers such as Sony Ericsson and Samsung will probably make S60 5th Edition phones too, but they haven't announced them yet.
Both the 5800 and N97 are based around 640x360 resolution touchscreens, though the N97 is physically slightly bigger and has a slide-out QWERTY keyboard.
At first glance S60 5th Edition looks somewhat similar to S60 3rd Edition, but the touchscreen makes it much quicker and easier to use. For example, touching the phone's clock takes you straight to the clock application, touching the phone profile name takes you straight to the profile selection screen, and things like browsing the web are much easier when you can click on links directly. The look and feel has been greatly improved too, with clearer visual cues and nice large on-screen buttons. The interface can be used entirely with your fingers, though you can use a stylus if you want to, and the 5800 is small enough to be used with one hand.
Texting works without physical buttons through a choice of four on-screen methods: a finger-friendly full-size horizontal QWERTY keyboard, a stylus-friendly vertical QWERTY keyboard, an on-screen keypad with predictive text, or a handwriting recognition system.
As it's brand new, there aren't many apps or games available for S60 5th Edition, but they should start appearing throughout 2009. In theory S60 5th Edition is also backwards compatible with S60 3rd Edition apps and games, though in practice it's difficult to predict which apps will work. There's also Java and Flash Lite support, though as with S60 it will take time for software to appear.
Just in case you're worried about accidentally touching the phone in your pocket, there's a screen lock button on the side of the 5800, and it has a proximity sensor to deactivate the screen while you're holding it to your face during a phone call.
Bounce Touch running on the 5800 through its TV Out feature
Gaming on the 5800
But that's enough of the technical stuff, let's get down to gaming. There are only two games included with the retail version 5800, a special version of Bounce Boing Voyage called "Bounce Touch", and Global Racer Raging Thunder.
Global Racer Raging Thunder is the same game that's been available on various S60 phones, though for some reason it's had all the in-game ramps removed. The interesting things to notice are the two new touch-based controls, which both allow you to steer the car in an analogue manner. The default method has you tilting the phone, and thanks to the 5800's built-in accelerometer the car moves according to which direction you tilt and how far you tilt. An alternative method is using the stylus, which displays a spider-like graph around the car that lets you drag the car in the right direction as well as controlling its speed. The tilt sensor sounds more intuitive, but when you actually play the game the stylus works much more precisely.
Bounce Touch is a cut-down version of the N-Gage platform's Bounce: Boing Voyage, and features some of the same 3D platform levels. The control method is entirely stylus based, but it's been implemented much more clumsily than in Global Racer, with the whole game being very difficult to control. The original button-based N-Gage Bounce was excellent and recently received an AAN Recommended award, but the 5800 version is practically unplayable.
More worryingly though, both games suffer from something else: very jerky 3D graphics, much jerkier than on current N-Gage phones.
The problem is possibly to do with the 5800's much higher screen resolution, it has more than twice the pixels of existing N-Gage phones. When 3D games have higher resolutions they look much more detailed, but they also become more jerky as more detailed 3D graphics require more processing power. That's why 3D games tend to slow down as you increase their resolution, and also why PC games often have the option of shrinking a game's screen size. What the jerkiness of Global Racer and Bounce means for gaming on the 5800 is unclear, as it could be that games actually written for S60 5th Edition will run more smoothly (Global Racer and Bounce were written for S60 3rd Edition), but it could also be that the 5800 just doesn't have enough processing power to cope with 3D games running at its full 360x640 resolution.
However, 2D games should run absolutely fine on the 5800. It's a very fast phone in other ways, it has instant response on its menus and excellent multimedia capabilities (including really good video playback). Something like Reset Generation would probably play absolutely flawlessly on the device.
Bounce Touch on the Nokia 5800
If the 5800 can't cope with 3D games...
As mentioned above, Bounce and Global Racer may not be the fairest tests of the 5800's abilities as they were written for other devices running an older version of the Symbian OS. It could be that 3D games written from the ground up for S60 5th Edition will run more smoothly on the 5800. If they run as smoothly as games on current N-Gage devices, then N-Gage should be able to come to the 5800.
However, if it turns out that 3D games just aren't feasible on the 5800, then it's doubtful that Nokia will bother bringing the platform to the phone.
Global Racer Raging Thunder on the Nokia 5800
N-Gage on the N97 and Beyond
Nokia has said that N-Gage will be on the upcoming Nokia N97, but the N97 will apparently have a faster processor and possibly graphics hardware too. That means 3D games could be much smoother on the N97 than the 5800, and that would explain why Nokia has announced N-Gage for the N97 but not the 5800.
The irony though is that the 5800 is easily fast enough for its other functions such as multimedia an internet. The only thing that suffers is 3D gaming, which is much jerkier than on older phones. Given this situation, perhaps it might make sense for Nokia to release a new version of the 5800 which includes graphics acceleration hardware and/or a faster processor? The N97 is such a phone to some extent, but it will be much more expensive and physically larger due to its built-in keyboard, so it's unlikely to sell as well as the 5800.
Pretty much everything else about the 5800 works well, and it's selling in large numbers in the countries where it's been released. It would be a real shame if the N-Gage platform missed out on all those potential users.
The upcoming Nokia N97, which has a slide-out QWERTY keyboard